Tea and a Book Review: Love Beyond Time by Bethany Claire

Love Beyond Time

Book 1 of Morna’s Legacy

Finally, I’ve gotten time to write this review! I intended to do it weeks ago, when I read the book, but the holidays and then being sick totally derailed my best intentions. Oh well! Here we are at last. So please, enjoy the review, and following it is the tea that I drank along with it. I hope you enjoy both. 🙂

The Review:

I’m sure you can see what drew me to this book in the first place–just look at that cover. It’s gorgeous! Regularly I troll through damonza.com to see what kind of delicious-looking covers he is cooking up, and this one caught my eye. Unfortunately, the book hadn’t even been released yet, so this was a much-hyped book that I was waiting for even before it came out. (Yes, that can still happen in the indie-publishing world! Although I was constantly unsure whether author Bethany Claire WAS self-publishing or not for a long time… it seemed like a very professional setup. I’d love to interview her some time!)

Anyway, drool-worthy cover aside, Love Beyond Time is a Scottish time-traveling romance, and it fulfills on each of those areas much as you would expect. Not to make it seem boring–just saying, you’re getting what you’ve been advertised here! One word of warning–when I first started to read it, I was under the impression that all three books were about Bri and Eoin. I was mistaken! The second book is about Aidan and Blaire, there’s a novella about Bri’s mother, and… well, I’m not sure what the third book in the series is about. (I guess there need to be SOME mysteries, right?) Anyway, the point is, if you get the feeling that things are progressing AWFULLY fast to stretch out the story into three books… that’s because it’s not.

Then again, I could be the ONLY one to make that mistake; in which case, just ignore me.

So Love Beyond Time is about Bri, a Texan Kindergarten teacher (this I’m sure comes from author Claire’s own history, as her bio says she lives in Texas and went to school to be a teacher,) who has no luck meeting a man because she’s busy at school–and apparently dreaming of Scottish hunks, which are understandably hard to compete against. (I can relate, Bri!) Then suddenly her mother, an archaeologist, is whisking her away to a dig in Scotland, to look into the sad history of a whole Scottish clan that was wiped out.

Enter the whole time-travel bit, in which Bri changes places with a Scottish woman named Blaire who is about to be wed to Eoin, heir-laird of the throne, and voila–you have the book in a nutshell.

YES, yes, okay, I’ll get to the good part! This book definitely delivers on steamy scenes of an, ahem, adult nature… ha ha. The very first time, right after Bri and Eoin are….together… is probably my favorite. It was just so HOT! Definitely female-friendly. (As was the easy-on-the-eyes Scottish prince…) There were a few more scenes, although I’ll admit to wishing that they were a bit longer and more descriptive. When I get to my sex scenes, I like them to last. I mean, not like whole chapters of it or anything, but I really want to be where the action is, if you know what I mean.

If you aren’t used to Scottish accents, don’t worry–the spelling of the words forces you to figure them out. It takes a bit of getting used to, but the effect goes between awkward, funny and sexy. The sense of danger at the end of the book was a bit forced, and very quick after everything that led up to it, but with a satisfying conclusion so that everyone can go back to being cozy with their Scottish hunks. (Or maybe just Bri. For everyone else, you have to pick up the rest of the books to give them their happy endings.)

The Tea:

Winter Spice

This was definitely my go-to tea of choice while I was reading Beyond Time, and I feel like I’ve posted something about it here before, which only goes to show how much I enjoy it!

“Create a relaxing moment with Twinings Winter Spice Herbal Tea. Expertly blended with chamomile blossoms and the flavours of crisp apples, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves, this herbal tea is sure to warm you with its smooth taste and slightly sweet aroma.”

I was reading this book around Christmas and New Years, this TEA is sort of a wintery experience, and the book takes place in November/December, so all around I got a very winter-time sensation as I was reading. In a perfect world I would have gone with something Scottish, but I didn’t have (believe it or not!) anything like that in my arsenal, so I went with the next-best thing.

This book gives you a very romantic feeling, as well as a sense of the raw beauty of the Scottish countryside, and a time long gone. (But obviously not forgotten!) If you let it, this tea can take you there as well, the spicy, natural taste keeping you toasty as you read about hunky men and old castles.

Kilt not included!

Overall, I say:

“If you’re looking for a nice romance with a foreign flavor, cozy up with this one. These Scottish lairds will wipe away your winter blues.”